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Ezekwesili: Pour La Patrie Ou La Mort!

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Ezekwesili: Pour La Patrie Ou La Mort!

By SOC Okenwa

Obiageli (Oby) Ezekwesili was the former Education Minister during the Obasanjo presidential era. She was the co-convener of the popular Bring-Back-Our-Girls (BBOG) movement that fought — and is still fighing — for justice for the abducted Chibok school girls. Few months ago she floated a political movement ‘Red Card Movement’ (RCM) aimed at mobilizing the youths for power acquisition in the next political dispensation. A fearless human rights activist Madam Ezekwesili has lately become a fierce critic of the faltering Buhari regime. ‘Madam Due Process’ is here with us for good measure!

Ever since the bloody Boko Haram terrorists invaded the female dormitory in Chibok town kidnapping hundreds of school girls some years ago when Goodluck Jonathan was still muddling up everything Oby has been on the news organizing rallies and demonstrations aimed at drawing attention nationally and internationally to the plight of the abducted damsels and demanding that the government bring them safely back home. Indeed many of the Chibok girls had since been ‘liberated’ while some others are still unaccounted for or missing.

During the infamous Obasanjo presidency spanning eight giddy years some professional women of class distinguished themselves. Aside Obiageli you had one great woman from the Bretton Woods, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who gave a good account of herself administratively under ‘Baba’ OBJ known for his omniscient domineering character. Under Obasanjo’s watch a woman was made a Governor in my state of Anambra. Virginia Etiaba benefitted from the illegal impeachment of the then Governor Peter Obi and after some months of gubernatorial nonsense justice was done with Obi bouncing back to his seat.

Last week (precisely Tuesday 26th June) Ezekwesili was reportedly ‘manhandled’ by some overzealous security operatives manning the Aso Rock presidential gate. She was engaged in a solo placard-carrying street protest against the recent massacre of fellow Nigerians in Plateau state. Defying mounting odds of possible arrest and brutalisation, she walked from the Eagles Square in Abuja to the gate of the Presidential Villa to deliver a message to Buhari.

The human carnage on the Plateau with over 200 Christians slaughtered had raised serious doubts about the capacity of the President to deal with the issue of Fulani herdsmen and the security menace they pose for the rest of us. According to eyewitness accounts hundreds of citizens were gruesomely murdered by the rampaging AK-47-wielding Fulani mad men and gunmen. Prior to the solo effort that went awry she had registered her anger on Twitter accusing the President of inaction and aloofness!

Danladi Ciroma, Chairman of North Central Zone of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) was reported to have said that the massacres in Plateau state was executed intentionally by the MACBAN members as reprisal attacks against the missing “sacred cows” numbering over three hundred! Though he had denied ever saying that to the journalist that reported same the damage had been done already.

Pray, how does the value of the missing cows equate the value of human lives? What is human life really worth in our dear Nigeria? What the MACBAN man was saying in essence was that cows are worth the same (if not more than) the human lives wasted! Nigeria has since gone to the dogs nay, cows with an executive Fulani herdsman in charge at Aso Villa. President Buhari is wittingly or unwittingly aiding and abetting the bloodletting on the Plateau by his nepotic refusal to proclaim Fulani herdsmen as terrorists.

We had said it before that if the ‘missing’ Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB Biafran elements were doing half of what the Fulani ‘sacred cows’ are currently doing the full federal military might would have since been deployed to tame them. But now that these marauding criminals masquerading as cattle breeders are using blood and iron to settle the issues of the day the President has become weak and inactive. He is sounding defensive even blaming the opposition!

He once said risibly the other day that some opponents were accusing him for inaction because he looked like one of the breeders! No sane mind would expect him to deal decisively with his ‘brothers’ at arms! The Fulani killers are enjoying some ‘immunity’ from the law hence the impunity!

According to the Amnesty International: “since January 2018 at least 1,813 people had been murdered in 17 states, which is double the 894 people killed in 2017”. These alarming figures point to one thing: failure of governance!

Read Also: Buhari electoral calculation: Fulani marauders from space

In the Nigerian constitution of 1999 Section 14 (Sub-section 2b) stipulates clearly that: “sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this Constitution derives all its powers and authority”. And that: “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government”. If this singular constitutional yardstick is to be used to judge the overall performance of the APC-led federal government then we could conclude that Olusegun Obasanjo may have been right when he declared without mincing words in the recent past that the Buhari administration thus far, three years and counting, has proven to be a “failure”!

The Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, had waded into the seeming complicity between the herdsmen and the helmsman in power. In a statement he issued recently entitled “A Language Of Non-Capitulation, Non-Appeasement!” he had lampooned the President for his “erstwhile language of complacency and accommodativeness in the face of unmerited brutalisation.’’ And continuing he maintained that “the temporary acquisition of weapons of mass elimination by any bunch of psychopaths and anachronistic feudal mentality will not translate into subjugation of a people and a savaging of their communities.’’

For Obiageli Ezekwesili, a combination of brain and the very opposite, therefore, we can only say: Aluta Continua, Victoria Ascerta! The protracted struggle to save Nigeria from herself (for which all of us are engaged) must continue unabated despite the harassments and intimidations for those of you at the homefront.

We must endeavour to remember the parting words of the late assassinated Burkinabe revolutionary leader, Capt. Thomas Sankara, at grave moments of national challenge: “Més compatriotes, pour la patrie ou la mort nous vaincrons!” (Fellow compatriots, for the fatherland or death, we shall prevail!).

Of course, victory is not uncertain! The electoral time for Nigerians to flash the red card is fast approaching. Let us arm ourselves with one, now!

 

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